The River Forest Public Library is located at 735 Lathrop in River Forest, Illinois

River Forest, Illinois

River Forest is a suburban village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Two universities make their home in River Forest, Dominican University and Concordia University Chicago. The village is closely tied to the larger neighboring community of Oak Park, Illinois. There are significant...

. The library serves the local community and is also part of the Metropolitan Library System

Metropolitan Library System

The Metropolitan Library System is an association of academic, public, school, and special libraries in Chicago and its suburbs in Cook, DuPage and Will counties.- SWAN :...

, which connects libraries in the south and west suburbs of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 through a shared catalog and other services. The current library building was designed by renowned prairie school

Prairie School

Prairie School was a late 19th and early 20th century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.The works of the Prairie School architects are usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands,...

 architect William Eugene Drummond

William Eugene Drummond

William Eugene Drummond was a Chicago Prairie School architect.-Early Years and Education:He was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of carpenter and cabinet maker Eugene Drummond and his wife Ida Marietta Lozier...

 and was constructed in 1928-1929.An addition was added to the existing structure during the early 1990’s. The River Forest Public Library serves a community of about 11,000 and has approximately 9,000 cardholders and 70,000 items.

History

The River Forest Women's Club was the impetus for the establishment of a public library in the community in the late 1890's. In 1898 and 1899 the Woman’s Club worked to establish a tax levy to support the library and to set up elections to select the first library board of trustees. The library first opened up as a storefront in 1903 and was housed in another leased building in 1904. From 1905 through 1929 the library was located at 508 Park Avenue, on land donated by Mr. George Gertz, in a building built by R.C. Spencer, a prairie school architect. The library opened at 508 Park with 1000 volumes and the first librarian was Mrs. Stella H. Nida, who had a salary of $15 a month. The library was first used for a program in 1908. In the library volumes and use continued to grow and in 1928-1929 a new library building at 735 Lathrop Avenue was constructed. In the 1970’s the Friends of the Library group was created. Ground was broken on the addition to the library in 1989 and was completed in 1992.

The library is a contributing property

Contributing property

In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing resource or contributing property is any building, structure, or object which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic district, listed locally or federally, significant...

 to the River Forest Historic District.

Collections and Program Information

The library has about 70,000 items and contains a wide variety of materials for Children, Teens, and Adults. In addition to books, materials available for check-out include DVD’s, music CD’s, audiobooks, ipods and ebook readers. The library also has a large number of current popular magazines as well as a variety of local, national, and financial newspapers. The library provides access to wide variety of databases online through the library website if you have a River Forest library card. Patrons can access full-text magazine and newspaper articles as well as resources on genealogy, health, history, literature criticism, and more through the online databases. The library also provides inter-library loan service for books and articles. The library has a special collection of River Forest historical documents and also has microfilm of the local paper, the Forest Leaves going back to 1903 (missing some years). The River Forest Public Library provides a variety of programs for Children, Teens, and Adults throughout the year. General programs for children include story-times, craft programs, and the annual summer reading program. Teen programs include gaming, crafts, and movie screenings. Adult programming varies widely and includes book discussions as well as the annual Fireside Chat series and Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...

Lectures.

Additional resources on River Forest

History of River Forest by Albert Hall. 1938.

River Forest: Origins, History, Founders, and Monuments by Bradford Schwarz. 2005

A Guidebook to the Architecture of River Forest by Jeannette S. Fields, editor. 1990.

River Forest History Files Contains materials from 1876-2002.